There, in the middle of the altar, were my mother’s bones, still wrapped in the purple furoshiki. It was quiet and I sat down on the floor in front of the ashes. “Finally, we are alone,” I whispered to her. What would she say to me if she could speak? She would tell me I was talented. A daughter of the moon kingdom. And what else? Would she tell me she had always loved me more than anyone else on this earth? “I have always loved you,” I said.
Briefly, I wondered where everyone else was, then realized they must be up at the burial plot, reading sutras and giving incense. In a few weeks, when it was even warmer, Masayoshi would bring my mother’s bones. And then, I thought, they will always have you. How unfair life could be.
I remembered my mother’s early advice that talent would keep me safe. It was up to me, I thought then, to protect what ought to be mine in the first place. I stood up from the floor and prepared to leave Masayoshi’s temple.
I didn’t go back to the house in Hachinohe, but bought a ticket from Akita to Tokyo, spending a grueling night on numerous trains with my bags. I called Timothy to tell him I was on my way and would see him in the morning, phoned a cab, and left.
“You’ll be there?” My voice was shaking.
“Right here.” A pause. “Satomi? Is everything … ?”
“My mother is dead. I don’t … there’s not much …”
“We’ll take care of it,” he soothed. “Just get here and we’ll take care of everything.”
Hours later I was in another taxi on my way to the hotel in Tokyo where Timothy had agreed to meet me. I didn’t want the man at the front desk to see all my luggage so I hovered outside the door, waiting until he went to the back office to get something for a customer. Then I pulled the key that I had taken with me out of my pocket, snuck inside, and took the elevator up to our room.
I struggled with my bags, then kicked open the door of the cheap business hotel with my foot as though I were an American. Timothy was not there. All of his belongings, his bags, our boxes of dishes, were gone. I looked for a note.
I thought that perhaps I had the wrong room. That must be it. He’d changed rooms without telling me. I did my best to remake the crumpled bed and fold the used towels. Hoisting my packages on my shoulders, I went downstairs to speak to the man at the front desk. He was young, like me, reflexively polite and reserved, no doubt working part time while he went to some sort of school. I asked him if he knew what had happened to the foreigner who had been staying upstairs in room 517.
“Ah.” The young man bowed. “It’s you. Our guest.”
“Last time I checked, I was myself, yes.”
“It’s a delicate matter.”
“If something has happened …,” I quavered.
“The fact is, the truth is …” He hesitated. “The gaijin was taken by the police this morning.” He held out a note.
“Police!”
“Before he left, he told us that you were coming.” He checked his books. “The room had been paid for in advance for a week. We assumed that you knew.”
“Well, I didn’t.” I took the note over to the sofa in the lobby and began to read.
But the man at the front desk continued speaking to me. “Anoh. I need to give you the room key. There is a new room.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I need the old key. Also,” the young man said, “we have your things in the back.”
“Things?”
“The luggage.”
“I’ll be right there,” I said. Then I unfolded the paper.
On the surface, the note didn’t reveal too much. Timothy told me who had come for him and where he was being held. He didn’t say why. I’d heard about this kind of thing, how foreigners would be singled out for some crime, and certainly I knew how relentless the wheels of justice were in Japan. The police would have arrested him only because they were convinced of his guilt, and all the questioning they did now would serve the purpose of extracting a confession, not clarification.
Bag by bag, I carried everything upstairs to the new room and once I was alone collapsed onto the bed.
I was exhausted, but I did not want to give in to fatigue and grief. Not yet. My flight from the temple had done a good job of keeping my tears at bay and I wanted to find—had counted on finding—Timothy and having another reason to keep moving. How could my flight have led to this dead end?
I would not cry.
I would not cry.
I had to do something.
Thinking was painful. I stood up and began to inspect the contents of Timothy’s bags. The police had obviously upended everything, for the packing paper we had used to carefully package the contents had been disturbed. But everything was still here.
I paused. If I sat here and just wallowed, I’d have to give myself over to the seduction of grief, to Timothy’s disappearance and the loss of Paris. I had to act. I lit a cigarette.
I looked inside the bags again. There were Timothy’s clothes, his shoes, paperback novels, and address book. I found his razor and underwear. I took a few changes of the latter and put them in a bag. Then I took my purse, locked the door, and went downstairs to make a few calls.
PART TWO
CHAPTER 6
True Nature
Rumi
San Francisco, 1980
I loved Charlie, even though he was missing an arm, a leg, and most of his hair. Eventually, we were able to take care of these flaws. But he would always retain his sharp white teeth and remain an unabashed scowler.
My father, François, brought Charlie home one winter and gave me the task of coming up with a name. We spent many evenings studying pictures of figures similar to Charlie, sketching his missing features on sheets of loose paper. “Isn’t it a pleasure to communicate with the past like this?” my father said to me. “Centuries ago, an artist pondered the same questions you and I are considering now.”
“What’s that?” I pointed.
“I’m making a nimbus. It’s like a halo. All good Buddhist deities are surrounded by fire. You know. Some people just seem brighter than others.”
At night, after François and I had finished our work, I took the clothes off my dolls and dressed and redressed Charlie. I particularly liked to see him in the outfit from my Madame Alexander Russian Courtier doll, which my father’s girlfriend, Sondra, had given to me in an effort to win me over and convince my father to marry her. (It hadn’t worked so far.)
Once we had carved the missing pieces out of wood and attached them to his body, Charlie was magnificent. His scarlet skin glowed, and his face took on a cast of pleasure. He stood up straighter. His jaw tensed into a ferocious scowl, and his wild hair echoed the flames of the nimbus that rustled behind him.
“Now everyone will see Charlie’s true nature.” My father beamed.
A few days later, François changed his mind and removed the lasso that had rested in Charlie’s right hand, and though he later told me it pained him to do so, he darkened some of the paint on the nimbus.
“We have done our job too well, Rumi,” he said. “These days people appreciate perfection, but they will not expect perfection from our friend.”
This is my first clear memory of entering into my father’s world. After Charlie, I understood that my father was a collector, restorer, and dealer all in one. The objects in our San Francisco home had not been selected by an interior decorator; they had been fashioned hundreds of years ago by artisans in China, Korea, and Japan. In this delicate atmosphere, I grew up to be a child everyone considered too serious and too bookish.
“Your daughter doesn’t like to play with the other children,” teachers complained.
I explained to François that it was the other children who didn’t want to play with me.
“Well,” he sniffed. “Can those other children tell the difference between peach bloom glaze and oxblood? I doubt it. I much prefer you this way.” And for a long time, his was the only approval I needed.
I came home one
day to find François surrounded by boxes lined with foam and dark-blue velvet. Sondra was with him, wearing an ankle-length skirt, the ends of her hair resting in the small of her back. Between my father and her there had been some kind of argument, for the air was thick beyond the usual tension that accompanies the frustrating act of packing.
“Do you have to sell Charlie, too?” I asked.
“We need the money, Rumi.”
“The Buddha said it’s not good to get too attached.” Sondra sighed.
“I was thinking of a compromise. A way to prolong saying good-bye,” François said. “How would you like to come to New York with me?”
Sondra said pointedly, “She’s going to miss school.” Sondra had looked after me last year when François had gone to New York for Asia Week, an annual event in which dealers from around the world convened to present their finest Asian antiquities to the public.
My father shrugged. “I’ll get her assignments for the week. We’ll do them at night. Or on the plane.”
“Won’t this be disruptive? To her budding social life?” Sondra asked, a little too hopefully.
“The decision isn’t really yours,” my father said.
“I’m François’ responsibility,” I clarified.
“A woman’s first trip to New York should be made with a man who loves her,” my father said to me, “so she will carry that first impression with her forever.”
Sondra looked at one of the boxes containing a jade bird. “Lucky duck. Traveling in style.”
We stayed in a hotel near Times Square, in a room that had a small, rigid bed and a window facing an airshaft. As soon as we arrived, my father hung up our clothes in the bathroom and turned on the shower so the steam would relieve his suits and my dresses of wrinkles. “Who needs a valet?” He smiled, pleased with himself. Then he unpacked the sandwiches Sondra had made, and we had our dinner and went to sleep.
In the morning, we took the bus to the New York City Armory, which housed Asia Week. I explored this labyrinth of good taste and high insurance premiums, admiring the English dealers who set up their booths with moody lighting. The Southeast Asian stalls, with their Hindu gods posing in flagrant sexual acts, disturbed me. A severe white woman, who wore a cheongsam and kept two shi-tzus with her, barked, “Don’t touch. Anything,” when I knelt down to pet the dogs. Charlie’s exotic looks made him a hit with New Yorkers. “Like a demon!” they declared. But Charlie was also an expensive piece—the price determined largely by his age and impressive condition—and few people made serious inquiries.
Late in the afternoon on that first day, a Buddhist emerged from the parade to hover at the edge of our little booth. I was usually irritated by Buddhists, who were in plentiful supply in California; Sondra had recently joined a Pure Land sect. There was something precious about these men and women, as though in their fascination with another culture they had first become lost, then smug about their altered condition.
The man saw me staring at him, and his smile came upon me, broad and bright. “I knew your mother, Satomi.” He had a tenor voice and the flat accent of a California native accustomed to a great deal of sunshine. “You have her eyes.”
“François?” I called.
My father turned and inhaled sharply. “Timothy Snowden.”
“You know that I prefer Snowden-roshi now.” The man winked, releasing me from the taut intimacy of his smile.
“Rumi, Snowden-roshi is an old friend of mine who has recently become an influential Buddhist priest.”
“Extreme conditions often force men to choose to become something they wouldn’t have chosen otherwise.”
“Yes,” my father agreed, fidgeting. “I didn’t originally mean to be an art dealer.”
A pause.
“How’s business?” Snowden-roshi continued, a little more brightly.
“Good, good.” My father nodded.
Snowden-roshi swept past us and began to inspect our wares. “I was hoping you could help me. I’m looking for a statue for the main hall of my temple in Los Angeles.”
“Buddha? Bodhisattva?” François recovered his composure and assumed his favorite posture, the expert.
“What I’d really like,” he looked at my father, “is something old. Something made at a time in history when artists knew how to help the devoted focus during meditation. Something with a compassionate face. Like a Guanyin. Or a … kannon.”
“You’re really better off with something new,” my father said. “Nice, big, and shiny. Most people don’t know how to appreciate art unless it has some flash.”
“Tell me about the Fudō.” Snowden-roshi gestured toward Charlie.
My father steered Snowden-roshi toward a corner of our display station, away from Charlie. A customer came into our area and began peering through a glass case to look at a row of netsuke, and my attention was diverted. Through furtive looks, I was able to see my father and Snowden-roshi speaking to each other, their hips cocked elegantly to one side like courtiers in a medieval painting, a hand every now and then adding urgency to a point.
The parade of sprightly, self-assured New Yorkers continued to churn through Asia Week. This perpetual motion extended to the street, where adults went in and out of shops and restaurants, busily weaving the taxing but alluring fabric of sophistication. I had hoped, after our first day in New York, that I, too, would participate in this tantalizing world. Instead, when our work was done, we went to a Korean deli across the street from the hotel and filled two plastic containers with food from a buffet—pasta, salad, fruit, and sushi. The stoic Korean lady at the cash register did a double take as she compared my features to my Caucasian father’s. “Here,” she said, handing me two pieces of Lindt chocolate.
Later, as we ate in our hotel room, I asked, “Who was that man?”
“Which man?”
“The Buddhist man.”
“Time for you to do your homework.”
“You know who I’m talking about.”
“Snowden-roshi is an old acquaintance. I doubt we’ll see him again.”
“He said he knew my mother.”
“Homework. Now.” François began to line up my books on the bed. Then, to soften his earlier severity, he said, “I’ll help you.” I was rather surprised to see just how quickly we could progress through the assignments together; a day’s worth of lesson material could easily be finished in an hour.
“I’m sorry,” he said when we were finished, “for that earlier bit of discomfort. But we are having a grand adventure together, and I don’t want anything unpleasant to spoil it.”
He hugged me, and I gave him one of my pieces of chocolate.
In the morning, I was sent on a mission.
“There is a piece of jade here, incorrectly marked as Ch’ing when it is Sung. Can you find it?” François asked.
I tried. I pored over every glass case, searching for the misidentified piece.
But I let him down. “I’ll give you a clue. You are looking for a cow. But hurry. Some Chinese are already onto its value.”
I looked for groups of Chinese gathered around a jade cow. You would think that this combination of elements would be rare, but the cow happens to be one of the most frequently carved figures across dynasties. Three men gazed at a glass case at Jade Phoenix of Ann Arbor and admired … a cow. A woman with horn-rimmed glasses and an ankle-length skirt of red crushed velvet sniffed at Suzi Wong of Long’s offerings, which included … a cow. The bovines were everywhere, at St. Mark’s Kyber Pass, at Xia Xiu Ltd., at Cardeiro Connoisseurs. I went back to my father empty-handed.
He was disappointed. He left me alone in our stall for a few minutes, and when he returned, he held out his hands. “Cardeiro,” he said. In the palm of his hand, it was clear to me that this sleepy, serene cow could be nothing other than Sung. “You must learn to see things out of context, Rumi. Like me,” he said proudly. “Over time you too will learn to recognize what is right and what is wrong. Then you will be a true connois
seur.”
Charlie, though popular, was not considered to be the most impressive sculpture in the show. That honor went to a slab of marble: an entire tomb wall depicting men wearing kerchiefs and carrying flaming pots while grapevines twined around them.
My father and the other dealers gossiped endlessly about this piece.
“Is it real?”
“Must be from central Asia,” my father said, “with that weird blending of Eastern and Western iconography.”
“Ah! You must be right.”
“How did they get it?” everyone asked.
We had our answer late on the third day.
Despite my father’s insistence that Snowden-roshi would not be back, he did return with several men and women—all Buddhists—who had come to Asia Week hoping to see the face of Buddha.
“What are you doing here with these people? They don’t even care if they are dealing with Heian or Edo,” François whispered.
“What does it matter”—Snowden-roshi shook his head—“as long as a piece of art does what its creator intended and moves the viewer?”
“It’s dangerous,” François said, “to be moved by bad art. Think of Hitler. Corporate boardrooms.”
The air hissed with a collective “shh.” The police had arrived with five men in black suits and two Chinese officials. They made their way to the back of the room where the tomb sculpture was sitting. François dropped his papers and hurried toward Charlie. I had seen him behave this frantically and protectively only once, when an earthquake had struck the shop.
We were all quiet, trying to listen. The word stolen flew around our stalls, and we held it at bay, afraid it might be contagious. Two dealers were guided out in handcuffs.
“Careful. Don’t hurt it,” one of the dealers begged as the strange tomb wall was wheeled out on a flatbed by the police.
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